For the writer, as I've noted before, nothing is wasted.

I spent the best part of two years editing documents for a coal-mining company. As it happens, the opportunity has arisen to write a coal-mining story (or, more accurately, a story in which coal mining plays a big part). I've been checking various things in the story with a miner buddy, and he verifies that the plot points I need are plausible. It was quite exciting to find out I can have a bit of faith in my own ability to learn and figure things out, and then to take that next leap and make a story out of them. Yee-hah!

On unrelated matters, the third season of Doctor Who just premiered in Australia, and I can only say Martha Jones so, so ROCKS!!!; and I have a nasty head cold. Can't win 'em all.

Now it can be quantified.

68% Geek

That's about what I figured, actually.

Not only that, but:
42%

Hm. Cause for worry?

Putting a story aside

The story on which I'd been pouring out the words ground to a painful halt the other day (see previous entry). I set it aside, tired of the unproductive time, and immediately wrote over 1,500 words in two days on a new story. Which is good, because I'm productive again, but I really like that other story and want to finish it. I think I took my characters into the wrong place, and now I have to shepherd them back out and into another path of the maze -- one that will actually lead to a satisfying and not-trite ending. I was looking for a bang-crash-gee-whiz-lightning-and-thunder madcap rush to the end. I don't think that's right for that story. I'm getting that sort of thing out of my system with the new story, anyway, which has a divorce, economic crisis, job loss, weird psychic powers, and a mine cave-in, all in the first three pages. Yee-hah!

Grndghgrghngh!

Type. Delete. Stare. Stare. Check email. Check it again. Stare. Surf. Delete. Stare. Type. Delete. Stare. Stare. Sigh. Stare.

I really don't like to write sad stuff.

I'm at a really sad, stressful plot point in the story I'm writing at the moment. When I was writing the beginning of the story, before things got rough for the characters, I was pouring out the words, 1,300 or 1,400 in a day. Now that the characters are in a bad place, I'm lucky to produce 500. Partly it's that I don't like experiencing bad things, so I don't enjoy imagining them. And partly it's that I'm convinced that anything stressful or emotional I write about comes out sounding mawkish, cartoonish, or just plain trite. I trust myself to write funny things, pretty things, happy things, even mildly weird things. But I don't trust myself to write scary, yucky, upsetting things. It has to be done, or else there's no story. But I don't like it.

Thirteenth wedding anniversary

As you all know, the thirteenth wedding anniversary is traditionally the broadband anniversary. So Houston and I have finally leapt off the creaky, corroded copper-dialup raft and begun to sail on the sleek sloop of broadband. My old email address will still work for a while, but if you need the new one, let me know.

Cold-weather camping

I love to camp. I hate the cold. These two fundamental emotions will be at war this weekend as I camp in the cold. I have packed so many clothing layers and sleeping-bag liners that it's actually rather embarrassing. I've decided to revel in my I-hate-and-fear-cold wimpiness by topping my sleeping ensemble off with a truly over-the-top fur-lined, Russian-style hat. It's a fabulous hat. Keeps me wonderfully warm. I shall put it to the test tonight, on the western slopes of the Blue Mountains.

UPDATE
Because of persistent heavy rains in Wollongong, those of us who were going to go camping ended up staying in town instead and going on storm-damage callouts. It was my first time out on the truck in about two-and-a-half years. I was rusty, it's true, but I was still useful. And it renews my credibility in the Unit. Not to mention that we helped five families. All in all, a good day, if a tad tiring.

A surprising oversight remedied

Believe it or not, I went through the US public-school system from kindergarten through senior year and was not once either requested or required to read To Kill a Mockingbird. Nor, for some reason, did I ever read it in subsequent years. Imagine!

So, at age 45, I resolved to remedy this oversight. I found a copy cheap at the remarkable Strand Bookstore, and started reading. It really is an astonishing book: straightforward, yet unbelievably layered, poignant, and resonant. In a way I'm glad I didn't read it when I was 15: large amounts of its subtlety would have been wasted on me. (Most likely some still is, but at least I feel I'm in a slightly better position to understand it than I would have been 30 years ago.)

A good day.

I wrote over 1,300 words today, on a story I'm really liking. Cool!

Settling back in.

Back in Thirroul. It's really beautiful, and the weather is spectacular at the moment. And the three of us -- husband, child, and I -- are back in one place. Alas, I am missing the rest of my family and my American friends, and I am homesick.

I just have to keep writing and get so rich and famous that I can travel back and forth whenever I want.